cover image of Sound in the Silence 2024 project

    About

    Sound in the Silence is an interdisciplinary remembrance project aimed at encouraging high school students from around Europe to actively reflect on the difficult aspects of the 20th century history with the use of artistic means.

    Drawing on their reflections and emotional reactions to what they will come to learn there, young students will work together with professional artists to create a performance based on acting, dance, music and creative writing.

    While the pupils learn about the site's past and work on the final performance, their teachers will take part in workshops on interdisciplinary ways of teaching history so as to exchange experiences with peers from different countries.



    Where?
    Bucharest and Pitești, Romania
    This year, four groups composed of one teacher and seven students each, will first meet in Bucharest, where they will learn about the Romanian 20th-century history, including the First and the Second World Wars, the communist period and the Ceaușescu era. After this, they will move to the former prison in Pitești, which was a scene of one of the most cruel experiments in the modern world, carried out between 1949 and 1951.


    When?
    5–13 October, 2024

    logo of SiS location 2024

    The Sound in the Silence project is an interdisciplinary educational initiative for young Europeans that initially focused on the Holocaust. However, as the end of World War II did not mark the end of suffering, this year's initiative will also cover the history and events that took place in Pitesti Prison in Romania.

    Pitești, a town not far from Bucharest, is the site of one of the most harrowing and brutal chapters in the history of post-war Romania. From 1949 to 1951, the communist regime used Pitești prison as a place of extreme psychological and physical torture. This dark period, known as the “Pitești Experiment,” was aimed at crushing the personality of the political detainees to prevent them from resisting the regime.
    The primary targets of this experiment were anti-communist university students considered a threat by the communist government. The methods of torture employed were atrocious and designed not only to break the individuals physically but also to dismantle their sense of self and humanity.

    From August 1948 onward, almost all political prisoners who were students at the time of the arrest were sent to Pitești prison. The prison has become infamous for hosting the brutal action named by Virgil Ierunca - Romanian poet, as “the Pitești phenomenon.” Students experienced brutal torture to denounce their own anti-communist activity, as well as all their acquaintances. They were also forced to distance themselves from their family, friends, and all moral values. To demonstrate that they had genuinely become “new men,” they were asked to become aggressors for other victims.
    The release of political prisoners in 1963-1964 did not bring the end of repression but rather a change. The Securitate moved to extensive surveillance of citizens, and those who still opposed the regime were convicted under common law charges or committed to psychiatric hospitals. After 1970, Nicolae Ceaușescu abandoned the liberalization measures and wanted to control society with ideological instruments and law enforcement. Nicolae Ceaușescu and his family became the subject of a personality cult unique in Eastern Europe. Also, attempts to form unions or organize dissident movements were repressed by the Securitate on the orders of Nicolae Ceaușescu.

    The leader of communist Romania wanted to radically transform the society, to replace the old villages and build monumental buildings, to show the country achieved success under his leadership. The most important project was to construct a House of the People (now the Palace of Parliament), in the Bucharest city center, demolishing many old beautiful neighborhoods. Massive apartment blocks were erected next to the Palace and along the main boulevards. Today we can still see this architectural spectacle of communism. As part of this year's edition, students will explore the history of the Ceausescu era through architectural reminiscences of that time. 

    These traumatic stories and the emotions associated with them will be discussed by the young project participants under the guidance of artists using the history-through-art method.

    In the course of the educational and artistic workshops, the youth, working with testimonies and accounts from survivors, will have the opportunity to hear their individual stories. This will be an important part of the project. They will also explore that sometimes part of remembering, especially painful events in the history of nations or communities, involves forgetting them. In addition, they will explore the idea that understanding and nurturing the memory of history is one of the most important elements in the formation of one's identity.
    This year's initiative will place young people in a position to confront this extremely challenging and oppressive history. They will learn the tragic stories of people not much older than themselves, who were stripped of all humanity by a harsh regime.

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    Artists

    Profile image of Dan Wolf Profile image of Dan Wolf

    Dan Wolf

    PROJECT ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOPS

    Dan Wolf is a hip-hop artist who works with rap, theater, personal narrative, and history to give voice to the problematic world we live in. His multi-sensory work draws its power from years of experience working, teaching, and performing with the critically acclaimed hip-hop music and theatre collective Felonious. His debut album “Blood and Bones, Skin and Scars” is a fearless exploration of ideals, values, and vulnerability, and marks his debut as a solo hip-hop musician. His projects have traveled all around the world from concert halls to museums to schools and memorial sites where he engages history and culture as a prompt to make vital music and theater that can only live in this moment. He is a Resident Playwright at the Playwright Foundation in San Francisco and is the co-founder of the Bay Area Theatre Cypher, a collective of performers who live on the cross fader of hip hop, theater, activism, and community.


    Profile image of Katarina Rampackova Profile image of Katarina Rampackova

    Katarina Rampackova

    DANCING WORKSHOPS

    Kat Rampackova is a choreographer, performer and dance activist. She graduated from the Swiss University of Physical Theater - Scuola Teatro Dimitri and subsequently graduated with a master of choreography at HAMU in Prague. She currently lives in Barcelona, where she deepens her dance education in contact improvisation and the somatic work - Body Mind Centering. She has dedicated herself to contemporary dance for 22 years. As a choreographer, she has been involved in the international interdisciplinary project Sound in the Silence since 2016. She also works as a teacher and choreographer at the Italian school Danzaria in Montevarchi. She specializes in site-specific performances, inclusive dance and creation of author performances. Together with Michaela Sabolova, they lead PST - Space of Contemporary Dance in Kosice, which, in addition to educational activities, produces performances, organizes an annual festival called MOVE Fest, where Kat is in charge of dramaturgy of the festival.


    Profile image of Sean Palmer Profile image of Sean Palmer

    Sean Palmer

    MUSIC WORKSHOP

    Sean Palmer (1977) trained in theatre and arts in Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He moved to PL permanently in 2008 and speaks Polish. He has been a part of the Warsaw theatre and performance scene since 2000 traversing night clubs to national museums, Ancient Greek musical reconstruction to Broken Beat MC, Edinburgh fringe theatre to National Opera, performing the avant-garde Neanderthal to Philip Glass. He is an active creator, collaborator and educator. Between 2010 and 2020 he ran his own experimental choir - GRE BADANIE - exploring the boundaries of sound and energy as a carrier of meaning. 2014 - 2018 he was the resident artistic director/conductor of the POLIN museum community choir which performed original content concerts twice a year connected to current exhibitions. Currently (2022) he is co-running MONT - a youth orchestra in Warsaw, leading a course called multivoice at the University of Warsaw and collaborates with the Museum of Contemporary Art leading short term choral projects. Sean is not a trained musician, but has found himself composing for theatre, dance and choirs as well as singing and recording in multifarious settings. Since 2015 he is the front man of the White Kites (Missing, Devillusion) and jazz trio William’s Things (William’s Things, A Heart Not all of Wood, The Robots are Coming). The major through line in his work is musicality or sounding. The search for the thing which can move us together regardless if it is a beat, a note a yelp or a growl, because sound can often go where words fail. Every day Sean works as VO artist from his studio in Warsaw. Apart from all the above ‘arty stuff’, he’s also a dad, a husband, has two kids, two cats, loves running and doesn’t eat animals.

    Educators

    Profile image of Tetiana Kriukovska Profile image of Tetiana Kriukovska

    Tetiana Kriukovska

    facilitator of group dynamics

    Tetiana Kriukovska was born and raised Donetsk, Ukraine, where she worked as a filmmaker. After the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 she founded the NGO Tolerance in You, which organises exchange programs for young people from Germany, Poland and Ukraine and which trains international educators who want to specialise in the topic of war. Tetiana moved to Germany in March 2022, where she worked as a project coordinator for the Ukrainian-Polish-German education network LIKHTAR at the educational institute in Bredbeck. Tetiana’s expertise includes filmmaking, international youth work, moderation in non-formal education and intercultural dialogue. Her long-time experience of working with youth in a sensitive and creative way makes her an excellent educator. During the Sound in the Silence project, Tetiana will be responsible for ensuring the participants’ wellbeing, offering them tools to reflect and focus on personal feelings towards what they have learnt. She will also facilitate collaboration and group dynamics. Her dream is to organise Sound in the Silence in Ukraine one day, fostering a new culture of remembrance of the war in her country.

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    Project Coordinators

    The coordinators of the 2024 edition of Sound in the Silence are Justyna Radziukiewicz and Dagmara Chełstowska.

    Contact: justyna.radziukiewicz@enrs.eu and dagmara.chelstowska@enrs.eu

    Read more about Justyna.
    Read more about Dagmara.

    Partners

    Organiser

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    Partners

    logo of The National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism of the Romanian Academy

    logo of Pitesti Memorial


    ENRS is funded by:

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    logo of DE Ministry

    logo of HU ministry 2023 NEW LOGO

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